A Place We Friends Can Call Home

by May Mansoor Munn

Out of the silence, a voice speaks. Heads lift, ears strain to hear the spiritual message spoken out of an "Inner Light" leading. Silence resumes as men and women and children center down in silent worship.

As Quakers (Friends), and as members of Live Oak Friends Meeting, we’ve wandered, Bedouin-like, all over Houston in search of a "home"--a meeting place where we could sit in silent worship in the manner of an unprogrammed Friends meeting, where our children could have First Day (Sunday) School, and where we could conduct our monthly business meetings.

In the mid-’50s, our Quaker group was a handful of seekers who met for evening worship at a private home. Later, as Friends grew in number, "home" was located in the old Jewish Community Center on Hermann Drive, where we planted a live oak tree on Arbor Day--now large and flourishing.

During the early ’60s, Friends met in what once was the Presbyterian manse, known to us as the Houston Council of Churches building on oak-lined Chelsea Place. At that time, some of our members became active volunteers at Jeff Davis, then Houston’s charity hospital. Red Cross-trained Friends worked as nurses’ aides and orderlies in an attempt to offer relief to the overworked staff and much needed care to the patients. As a result of this experience, writer Jan de Hartog, a member of our meeting, wrote his book, The Hospital. Concern of Friends and others for Jeff Davis and the ensuing publicity helped end the stalemate between county and city over the fate of the hospital, hastened its physical move to Ben Taub in 1964, and initiated much needed reform.

Later we moved to the Peden YWCA on Clematis Lane, near South Post Oak. Our stay there was interrupted for about a year when we began to meet at the Religion Center on the University of Houston campus. But it was at the Peden Y, a year following my husband’s death, that I met and decided to marry Albert Munn, a recent member of our Meeting. Although the Peden Y was functional, we hoped for a more inspirational setting for a Quaker wedding. With the help of our friend Phil Libby, then regional director for the National Council of Christians and Jews, we were given permission for a small Meeting for Marriage at the Rothko Chapel.

During the mid-’70’s our search for a permanent location took us to the Heights where a large, two-story house on an attractive street sold for a mere $25,000. But Quakers, being an individualistic lot, while also believing that the sense of the meeting should guide our decision-making, were not of one mind on the question of ownership of property. So we let it pass. At the same time, one of the de Menil "gray" houses in the area of the Rothko Chapel was offered for our use. We accepted gratefully, and for five years or so, our Live Oak Friends Meeting was located on the corner of Sul Ross and Mandel. Next, we were able to temporarily rent space from the Chocolate Bayou Theater, located near where the Brown Convention Center now stands. During this time, attendance of plays by our members increased dramatically.

Our following move was to the Mennonite Church on Wirt Road, in Spring Branch, where we arranged for use of the building Sunday evenings. The Mennonites, with whom we share a peace testimony, were generous, the building and grounds attractive, but evening meetings were sometimes inconvenient, especially for parents with small children.

This time our search for a permanent meeting house began in earnest. While looking for a place, we also found that 1982-83 prices for property were sometimes triple those of the mid-’70s!

We finally found it--a place we hoped would be a stepping stone toward spiritual and physical growth--a modest blue-painted frame house with its own small garage apartment to be used for our First Day School for children, a place to worship in the manner of unprogrammed Friends, to have discussions, to conduct business meetings, to build community. Our very own (though mortgaged) meetinghouse, on the corner of Alexander and 10th in the Heights.

Our 12-year stay at the Alexander Street meetinghouse gave us a wonderful sense of stability. Many who came to "look in" on Quakers decided to stay. But as our numbers grew, the meetinghouse became more crowded, and classroom space, which by now included a storage room and a temporary structure as well as the garage apartment, could no longer accommodate the children’s activities.

Faced with our need for more space and better accommodations, our community decided to look for property or land suitable for a meetinghouse. Meanwhile, we were contributing to our building fund in the hope that we would find something suitable, yet within our means. In early 1995, we sold the house on Alexander Street and purchased land on which to build our meetinghouse. The property was located on the edge of the Heights, west of Durham and between 25th and 26th Streets. Several months later, a family in our meeting generously contributed a smaller piece of land adjacent to the land we’d bought earlier.

After we sold the house on Alexander, we took shelter on Sunday mornings at SSQQ, a dance studio owned by Rick Archer, who had grown up in our meeting. And despite the unusual worship environment of mirrored walls and a glittering disco ball overhead--which often gave rise to interesting analogies about the many ways we reflect the Inner Light, we settled in, until we could raise enough money for a building to meet our needs.

Early in December of 1995, Hiram Butler, a newcomer to our meeting and co-owner of the Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, introduced us to James Turrell, a Quaker artist whose medium was light. Turrell spoke of his Quaker background and shared his dream of creating a "skyspace" for a Friends meetinghouse. Turrell had created a skyspace for P.S.1, a contemporary art museum in Long Island City, N. Y., and had named it Meeting. Would Live Oak Friends meeting be willing to incorporate Turrell’s gift of a skyspace into the new meetinghouse we hoped to build?

And so began our process of research and learning, both about Turrell and his work, and also about our new neighbors--among them elderly retirees and young Hispanic families--in the modest neighborhood where we had bought our land. And while we had genuine concerns, the meeting became clear that we would accept Turrell’s installation with the hope that, like the Rothko Chapel, the project would serve as both link and ministry to the wider, non-Quaker community.

Because of Turrell’s fine reputation as an artist, many in the art community, we were told, would welcome the opportunity to contribute to our project. Sally Reynolds, along with Hiram Butler, gave generously of their time and knowledge to help us connect with art patrons in Houston and elsewhere. Leslie Elkins was hired as the architect for the project because of her experience with including light features in spaces designed for worship. She designed a campus of three buildings: the meetinghouse with skyspace for our worship, a community center with kitchen and classroom space to house service projects and our education program, and a smaller office/library building with an upstairs apartment for a caretaker.

In October of 1998, we celebrated our future home on our land during an afternoon of festivities culminating in a groundbreaking ceremony. Neighbors and friends joyfully shared in

the fun, fellowship, and music on that memorable day when hopes were high, and we could almost touch our dreams.

The hard work of grounding those dreams in reality and converting them into wood and concrete and steel continued, until at last, despite continuing financial concerns, we saw our way to begin construction on the first phase of the project--the meetinghouse that, we trust, will be filled both with the light from Turrell’s skyspace and the Light symbolized by the art. The decision to begin with the worship space was in some ways a difficult one for our community. It required us to walk forward in faith that a way would somehow open to allow us to house our children’s education program and our service activities. Happily, just before construction on the meetinghouse began, a little notice appeared on the fence of the property across from ours: "House for sale--to be moved."

Friends decided to purchase the small frame house from our neighbor, who had lived there with her family for over forty years, thus saving her home for the neighborhood and for our meeting family. Nestled under the oak trees facing 26th Street, the small house is waiting to be filled with the voices of children and the presence of Friends and neighbors. Until we are able to build our community center, this little house will bridge the meetinghouse into the surrounding residences and will provide, on a modest scale, the classroom and community space to help us feel immediately at home in our new neighborhood.